It may not be too surprising that Walt Disney Pictures, in its ongoing attempt to stay relevant with younger audiences as well as adults, has chosen to revisit its own past. The children of the 1990s who are now adults with their own kids in tow grew up with animated adaptations of classic fairy tales, such as Beauty and the Beast, The Little Mermaid, and Aladdin. (Only The Lion King, among those films in the Disney Renaissance, wasn’t a direct adaptation of one specific story; instead, it’s inspired by such classics as Shakespeare’s Hamlet.) And the children of the 1960s and 1970s, who would go on to be parents of those 90s kids, grew up with adaptations of stories like The Jungle Book, Sleeping Beauty, and the King Arthur legend. So the idea that the Walt Disney Company would mine the past for its new films is, by now, standard operating procedure. However, the key (and not-so-minor) difference is that Disney used to look to fairy tales of old for its inspiration; now, to its detriment, it looks to itself.
On one hand, the financial future of Disney’s film division couldn’t be brighter: the company is now the proud owner of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, which has proven to be massively and consistently successful; they own Pixar Animation Studios, which may not produce as many films per year as its direct competition, DreamWorks Animation, but manages to always deliver a hugely successful film; and, of course, they own Lucasfilm now, and are preparing to release a new Star Wars film in 2015. The common joke now online is that Disney will eventually own every property or character you loved when you were a child, so they can revive those properties and characters for all-new, and hopefully not terrible, adventures. They’re already pretty close, of course; however, because of the company amassing so many subsidiaries from which to make tons of money, Walt Disney Pictures itself has almost lost its identity. The studio that a mouse built has now lost some of its luster precisely because its overlord has bought so many new distribution arms, all of which simply attract more attention.
Maleficent is the latest in a seemingly neverending string of films from Disney that serve as a reminder that the movies they used to make sure were something special, instead of being a film that is something special all on its own. Back in 2010, there was Alice in Wonderland, one of the most inexplicably successful films of recent memories. (Yes, as someone will surely point out, this Tim Burton monstrosity was the first big-budget movie in 3D after Avatar, which was a massive hit. But still. A billion dollars. A billion dollars?) Last year, hoping to capitalize on the same audience, Disney released Oz the Great and Powerful, which was essentially the Broadway musical Wicked from a nicer Oz’s perspective. And now there’s Maleficent, which is essentially Wicked, but utilized for a different fairy tale. If you wanted, you could even consider last year’s Saving Mr. Banks as being awfully similar to these projects, in that it existed in part to remind you that Mary Poppins is a) an excellent film everyone should watch again and again, and b) an excellent film that will also be on Blu-ray for the first time so preorder soon.
As mentioned above, next spring will bring us Cinderella, in live-action, with Cate Blanchett playing the evil stepmother and Helena Bonham Carter as the fairy godmother. (Kudos to the casting team, at least, for not casting Blanchett and Carter in the reverse roles, which would be far more predictable.) But wait, there’s more. Last week, it was announced that Disney had hired Bill Condon to direct a live-action version of Beauty and the Beast, which will apparently incorporate a lot of the songs from the original film. In effect, as of now, it seems as though Condon is directing an adaptation of the Broadway musical. Plus, there’s Jon Favreau’s live-action/CGI hybrid of The Jungle Book, co-starring Idris Elba, Scarlett Johansson, and Lupita Nyong’o. (All of these actors have been cast to provide the voices of animals in the film, natch.) Walt Disney Pictures is now making adaptations of adaptations, or copies of copies. Obviously, it’s not as if the studio hasn’t felt comfortable making technically unoriginal films since its very inception. But there’s something hollow and soulless about the recent trend in live-action filmmaking.
To be fair, Disney is not entirely to blame for this trend, but simply for following along with the rest of Hollywood. Other studios aren’t immune to adapting the familiar, often by remaking older films with dedicated fans. Universal Pictures has promised a live-action take on The Little Mermaid directed by Sofia Coppola (whose inclusion is, at this point, the only reason to be even moderately intrigued in this project). Beauty and the Beast might get another live-action take, starring Emma Watson. (Guillermo del Toro, until last week, was attached to direct the film.) Even outside of the fairy-tale world, there are plenty of attempts from Hollywood to capitalize on the collective childhoods of Generation X, or Y, or the Millennials, or whomever. The Transformers movies, superhero blockbusters, and even the excellent final entry in the Toy Story franchise succeed in part because they attract the adult audiences who grew up with these characters in their lives as action figures, toys, or something else.
Not every one of these films is bad, clearly. Some of them can transcend their genre trappings or tap into hidden reserves of emotion without feeling overly manipulative or condescending. But too often, and especially with Disney, the people in charge presume that audiences only need a sprawling world full of CGI creatures and at least one big-name actor to get interested. No doubt, after Alice in Wonderland rode the wave of goodwill people had towards Avatar, that allowed Disney to assume they knew exactly what people wanted now. Oz and Maleficent have both done well at the box office, but neither will make as much as Alice (which, by the way, is getting a sequel in the summer of 2016, because of course it is). Just as Guardians of the Galaxy and Big Hero 6 will be the first truly risky films from Marvel and Disney, Cinderella may be similarly risky, especially since the “teaser” released last month featured literally nothing except for a glass slipper for a minute. Do audiences know that this movie is coming out? Will they care about Cate Blanchett the way they might have about Angelina Jolie?
It’s hard to know what movie will represent the last straw, but eventually, audience interest will shift to something else. Some things, granted, never change; superhero movies may only go out of style after they’ve all been exhausted for at least three movies each. But there are only so many fairy tales to make, only so many Disney animated movies to revive into live-action, whether they’re done with or without skill. (To this writer’s eyes, all of the fairy-tale adaptations have been done with an absence of skill in character development or complexity, even if special-effects houses have been working overtime on each project.) Even if Disney feels the urge to retell the story of something like 101 Dalmatians from Cruella De Vil’s perspective–not like the 1996 remake with Glenn Close, but something where, somehow, Cruella’s more sympathetic in her actions–there will come a point where audiences no longer care for these reminders of the past.
In truth, if a movie like Maleficent exists partly to remind us all that Sleeping Beauty (which just so happens to be getting a Blu-ray re-release this October, which is surely coincidental and not in any way intentional) is one of Disney’s most glorious and visually daring animated triumphs, then why even pay the money to see the film instead of watching the 1959 film at home? Or here’s a better idea for Disney to consider if they’re most interested in nudging audiences to their past works: re-release the past works. If you looked through Box Office Mojo’s archives, you’d find some surprising numbers regarding Disney re-releases. In 1987, for example, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was re-released for its 50th anniversary and grossed nearly $50 million. (Adjusted for inflation, it made nearly $100 million in 2014 dollars.) Cinderella was also re-released that year, grossing just about $35 million. Yes, the movie marketplace has changed vastly, but if Disney was better able to choose which films they re-released and when, as with The Lion King a few years ago, they could make a ton of money without spending upwards of $200 million on a production budget.
If Walt Disney Pictures is most interested in making movies that remind us of the past, they might as well just go all in and bring the past back to the present without involving live-action environments. Their animation department, even considering the phenomenon that is Frozen, is looking for direction in its future projects, which vary from a Marvel property to a tropical-themed fairy tale to a buddy comedy with anthropomorphized animal detectives. The most cohesive period of their recent history was the Disney Renaissance, which was in part revived thanks to 1980s-era re-releases of older animated films. Perhaps, if Disney channeled its energy correctly and re-released the right older films (such as, say, Sleeping Beauty), they might not only make money, but figure out a direction for the future that involves something new, not something familiar.